1. Field of Invention
The invention relates generally to the field of musical instrument improvements and accessories and specifically to flutes.
2. Description of the Related Art
The scale system of the modern Boehm flute has been designed with a focus on accuracy of pitch production as defined through 1) the placement of the tone holes; 2) the size of the tone holes; and 3) the interior diameter and length of tubing upon which the tone holes are placed. These factors are combined in a mathematical schema to arrive at the best compromise of pitch and intonation for each flute.
The harmonic content of the individual notes may vary widely depending on the variations in schema and the manipulation of different factors in the schema. It is widely accepted that an increase to the overall length of the tubing (or scale length) has the effect of increasing the complexity of the harmonic content of all notes played on the flute while enhancing its resonance and projective capability.
Scale length is defined as the length of the sounding wave from the cork plate of the headjoint to the cutoff end of the footjoint on any flute. This increase in scale length may be accomplished with the addition of a short length of tubing applied to the bottom end of the footjoint of any existing flute.
However, when applied to an existing instrument, the scale length addition also has the adverse effect of creating irresolvable intonation problems in the bottom three notes of the scale and an overall degradation of the relationship between the scale tones throughout the sounding range of the flute. This occurs because the mathematical relationship (schema) between the bore (inner dimension), the length of the tube (scale length) and the placement (and size) of the tone holes becomes invalidated by changing one factor without adjusting the others to compensate for that change.
The subject invention focuses upon increasing the harmonic content of the instrument throughout its full range and increasing the projective capacity of the flute by increasing the length of any existing flute without any of the adverse effects discussed above.
The subject invention accomplishes this task by adding a carefully defined and proportioned length of tubing to the bottom of the flute tube (footjoint). This length of tubing is designed with a venting system specifically placed to eliminate the adverse effects normally encountered by increasing the length of an existing scale.